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Sunday, July 12, 2009

My Kind of State

As I prepared to ride away this morning, I discovered my front tirewas flat. I patched it, but found that when I'd pump it up, there wasa huge bulge in the bead, to the point where I was afraid the tirewouldn't stay in the rim. I waited for the shop to open and took itin. The guy insisted on inflating it to its rating, and, sure enough,with a deafening pop, the whole thing exploded. I got a new tube andtire.

Dubuque, because of its bluffs, has some of the steepest streets I'veever seen. I moaned and groaned over these, then got sick of it andwalked. Until in Centralia a bunch of bikers practicing for theRAGBRAI passed me. I didn't want to embarrass myself and rode withthem and talked, panting up hills (they didn't have luggage, and saidthey could never bike with it; I told them to borrow some of mine fora few miles, but no takers). They turned around at Dyersville and Iwas alone again.

It was flattening out. I was enjoying the fields, the sea of lushgreen to every horizon. The view no longer changed as I pedaled, soevery time I'd pass a town, I'd be stunned at how far I'd gone.

I rode alongside a car and the woman rolled down her window.

"You need to wear something bright. What you're doing is dangerous."

She seemed to enjoy lessons, so I offered one. "You must have notnoticed any of my reflectors, probably because we're heading into thesetting sun and your headlights are off, so there's nothing toreflect. You should have your lights on when driving into the sun."

She rolled up the window. Oh, well.

I pulled into Independence and found a park and some people walkingthrough. "Hey, do you know where I could pitch a tent so no one wouldcare?"

They looked confused, and I got worried, but the confusion was theopposite of what I'd thought. "I can't imagine a place where someonewould care."

Who am I?

Born in Russia, I was imported to the United States by the time I was 6, and grew up in Massachusetts. I graduated from Cornell University in 2005 with a degree in astrophysics, and have since worked in astrophysics and cognitive neuropsychology, and have run a few small (read: tiny) businesses. I have lots of hobbies, a big one being social experiments. I've always been jealous of those people in stories who drift from place to place finding work, and have decided my next step will be to set up and run an experiment to see how well that would work in modern reality.